Salon: Books That should be Banned from Schools.

[kennyc]

Reader responses: Books you want banned


Laura Miller and other Salon writers weighed in on books they’d like to see banned from school reading lists — from “Lord of the Flies” (“Is it pure sadism [that makes teachers assign that book]?” asked Andrew O’Hehir) to “Ivanhoe,” which went a fair way toward dulling Life editor Sarah Hepola’s enthusiasm for high school English.

Laura also asked readers to weigh in on their least favorite books from their school days, and you were quick to volunteer (there are nearly 200 comments on the article so far).

So, which books won’t we be finding on your grown-up bookshelves, with 8th-grade annotations and yellowed endpapers lovingly preserved?

Well, for one thing, some of you really, really don’t like “Ethan Frome.” In your eyes, it’s not just “tedious.” It’s also “bleak,” “depressing” and “insufferable” enough to “[crush] your soul.” And if anything, “Silas Marner” is even more unpopular; one commenter quipped that it ought to be “hurled into the Mariana Trench.”

Other volumes less than dear to (some of) your hearts include “Moby-Dick,” Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “Jane Eyre,” “Invisible Man,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Paradise Lost,” “Heart of Darkness,” “Little Women,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “Crime and Punishment” (“It took 10 years and a degree in computer science before I’d exorcised my demons and picked up anything deeper than a Robert Ludlum novel,” one of you wrote) and “Great Expectations.” And suffice it to say that, were he still alive, John Steinbeck would be unlikely to find himself in your collective debt.

more:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/books_you_want_banned/

[DiapDealer]

Obviously I take exception to the use of the phrase "Books you want banned" when "Books you wish you hadn't been forced to read" would probably more accurately describe the gist of the article.

But...

I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat thinking I have a test covering Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables that morning.

[patrickt]

And for me, if a school library chooses to not buy a certain book, it's a responsible decision they're made and not "banning". For example, I would not encourage a high school, or junion high, to have "The Anarchists Cookbook" on their shelves. Books on combat knife fighting would probably best left for other venues. The same would go, in my opinion, for racist hate-literature regardless of the source.

I discovered in the 5th grade that reading books I wanted to read was a lot more enjoyable than reading books that the teacher wanted me to read. There really needs to be a happy medium.

I was quoted once as saying that if schools taught sex like they teach reading by the time kids reached puberty very few of them would want to do it. I would have to say that in the past tense now, as in how reading was taught.

I tell little kids, "All the secrets in the world are written in books and when you learn to read you can learn all the secrets, especially the secrets your mother doesn't want you to know." They all laugh and know I'm joking, and not joking. The promise is there.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Obviously I take exception to the use of the phrase "Books you want banned" when "Books you wish you hadn't been forced to read" would probably more accurately describe the gist of the article.

But...

I still occasionally wake up in a cold sweat thinking I have a test covering Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables that morning.

Truth.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by patrickt

....

I tell little kids, "All the secrets in the world are written in books and when you learn to read you can learn all the secrets, especially the secrets your mother doesn't want you to know." They all laugh and know I'm joking, and not joking. The promise is there.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Obviously I take exception to the use of the phrase "Books you want banned" when "Books you wish you hadn't been forced to read" would probably more accurately describe the gist of the article.

This.

My own personal nightmare of assigned reading? Watership Down. I have never endured such a tedious, pointless novel which was so badly in need of being edited down. Seriously, you could throw away 300 of those pages and it would make no difference to the story. It was like having every hair on my head slowly ripped out, one by one. Painful, but simultaneously so tortuously boring that it drove me to near-insanity before the pain even registered.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors

My own personal nightmare of assigned reading? Watership Down. I have never endured such a tedious, pointless novel which was so badly in need of being edited down. It was like having every hair on my head slowly ripped out, one by one. Painful, but simultaneously so tortuously boring that it drove me to near-insanity before the pain even registered.

Out of curiosity... what age were you when it was assigned? I wasn't thrilled with the novel (much to the dismay of all my classmates) at the time, either. But not because of it's length or tediousness; anthropomorphism just always rubbed me the wrong way. Even as a child (though I didn't know the term for it until much later).

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Out of curiosity... what age were you when it was assigned? I wasn't thrilled with the novel (much to the dismay of all my classmates) at the time, either. But not because of it's length or tediousness; anthropomorphism just always rubbed me the wrong way. Even as a child (though I didn't know the term for it until much later).

Oh, don't get me wrong. I could bang on all day about those damn rabbits. It was like Winnie the Pooh trying to be ultra-deep. Ugh. You could knock 300 pages off it, but I don't think it would make the story good - just less crazy-making.

I think I was 16 at the time? I enjoyed some of the other stuff most of my peers hated - including some of the stuff on that list. But Watership Down made me want to tear my face off.

[Apache]

The worst book I ever read was The Scarlet Letter. I was forced to read it in High School.
Apache

[emellaich]

The books my kids have been assigned haven't been the typical "classics". These days they seem to run to recent releases.

However, to make the list it seems the book must be full if social messages and be depressing. Let's try to guess, the perfect formula for a book list book:

An orphaned minority, handicapped child is reunited with his abusive grandpa who is dying of cancer. He tries to escape at school, but he is bullied there and is assigned an overwhelming class project by a mean teacher. But by the end of the book, the teacher turns out to be pretty cool after all. Maybe we can also fit a lost, blind kitten in there, but my experience is that most of these orphans don't have pets for support. However, there is usually one good buddy/friend that they share all of their misfortunes with. Of course, the friend is often sick or caught and punished.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by emellaich

The books my kids have been assigned haven't been the typical "classics". These days they seem to run to recent releases.

However, to make the list it seems the book must be full if social messages and be depressing. Let's try to guess, the perfect formula for a book list book:

An orphaned minority, handicapped child is reunited with his abusive grandpa who is dying of cancer. He tries to escape at school, but he is bullied there and is assigned an overwhelming class project by a mean teacher. But by the end of the book, the teacher turns out to be pretty cool after all. Maybe we can also fit a lost, blind kitten in there, but my experience is that most of these orphans don't have pets for support. However, there is usually one good buddy/friend that they share all of their misfortunes with. Of course, the friend is often sick or caught and punished.

This. Why couldn't we ever read anything fun? I appreciate a good depressing book, really... but humor can have some great messages too.

[JDK1962]

Personally, I think a lot of people have their opinion confused with fact.

A book is "good" or "bad" for an individual at a particular time and in light of what experiences they've had and what they've read before.

I'd be happy to rag on Jane Eyre all day, since as an 8th grade male, being forced to read that book was torture. There was nothing in it for me. On the other hand, I loved Catcher in the Rye when it showed up as an assigned reading, and I loved Watership Down when I picked it up outside of class, and I loved Ivanhoe when I finally got to it in my 30s (Jude the Obscure, read around this same time, made me want to kill myself...I'm surprised there isn't more Hardy on that list).

Liking/disliking books is like throwing spaghetti at a wall: some will stick, some won't. But blaming the spaghetti seems dumb.

[Stephen_Melling]

Agree with Watership Down being in dire need of cutting down. Read it only the one time when I was in my early twenties and I'd expected something at least as concise as the animated movie. I was unaware Watership Down was school material.

[DiapDealer]

I was unaware Watership Down was school material.

It wasn't at my school. I just had a hippie for a Jr High science teacher in the seventies who encouraged us to read it and LoTR on our own, and devoted a small portion of class time to discussing them.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

A book is "good" or "bad" for an individual at a particular time and in light of what experiences they've had and what they've read before.

In support of what you are saying, I remember being assigned a book that I hated. After graduating, I was desperate for something to read, and found my old book and reread it. This time around I loved it. I wasn't enough older for my tastes to change. The only change was that I wasn't forced to read it.